Having a baby is an inherently painful proposition. The birth process is punctuated with a series of decisions made around minimizing risks and coping with the pain, which is unpredictable in both intensity and duration. An epidural can help with pain, but how does that change the risks that you and your baby face?

We all know how to carry an infant car seat, right? You loop your arm through the handle, rest it on the inside crook of your elbow, and let it hang. Then, later you pop an Advil for the wrist, neck and back pain induced by dragging around at least 20 pounds at an awkward angle.

Obviously, if you break your leg, you’re going to head straight to the nearest emergency room. But it’s harder to know what to do when you’ve rolled your ankle, or have a nagging pain in your knee. Will you be fine with rest and ice, or do you need to get it checked out?

Your elbow is a very important but delicate joint that can get aggravated from overuse—and bad-looking pull-ups. Elbow pain sucks, but if you want to keep doing pull-ups for their very real benefits, try a “neutral grip,” where your palms face each other.

Our spines secretly hate us. One-third of people in the US suffer from some form of back pain. That number is expected to greatly increase over the next few years, thanks to a combination of the desk-bound life and our generally inactive society. Night should seemingly bring relief, but the discomfort doesn’t lessen…

From the headlines, prescription painkillers sound pretty scary. Some of the people who take them switch to heroin, and some die of overdoses. The problem is so bad that the FDA has mandated black-box warning labels about the risk of abuse. But at the same time, these drugs are common and useful tools to manage pain.

Needles are no fun, especially for kids. While we’ve mentioned before that cartoons and video games can distract both kids and adults from the pain of a shot, there are actually a ton of other techniques that can help—including applying a numbing cream.

Advil, Tylenol, and aspirin all claim to treat minor aches and pains, but they’re not interchangeable. Ibuprofen (the ingredient in Advil and Motrin) works the best in most cases—but all three are probably less effective (and less safe) than you’ve been assuming.